And now for something completely different. The Washington Post today has a piece about what they got when they asked AI image apps to produce pictures of beautiful women. They basically got this:
This is presented as problematic because it reinforces stereotypes of what's beautiful in a woman. But this should come as precisely no surprise to anyone. AI engines are trained on human input, so they're going to output averages of what actual people think are beautiful: slim figures, regular features, flowing hair, etc. This has been the Western ideal of beauty for a very long time.
But I wondered why they limited themselves to women, so I decided to see what AI had to say about handsome men. I used GPT4 because it was handy, and it turned out to be tricky. The top left image was its first try. I asked for explicitly different men, and it kept churning out tiny variations on the same white guy. You can see this at the top right.
Then I asked it for a handsome Black man and got the image at the lower left. Finally I asked for a Hispanic man, but for some reason it told me it couldn't do that. I switched gears to a Latino man and got the image on the bottom right.
As you can see, what I got were slim figures, regular features, and well-manicured hair. Interestingly, I also got gray suits and no socks every single time—except for the allegedly Latino dude, who appears to be wearing gray socks.
Also interesting: Nearly every image has dark hair. Why no blondes or redheads?
In any case, there you have it: AI interpretations of beautiful women and handsome men, all of which are exactly what you'd expect. Good job, AI.
